D&D 3.5- Undead Fort Saves

[Lateral]

...How do I make them not suck? I realize that immunity to non-object-affecting things make them immune to many Fort-affecting spells, but Disintegrate fries vampire and Wizard can scribe Disintegrate. To make my BBEG vampire psion effective, he kind of needs to not ALWAYS fail Fortitude saves. HALP?

Edit: I'm willing to spend up to two feats and pretty much unlimited gold or XP, but no class levels. The character in question is a Gray Elf Vampire Psion 10/ Thrallherd 11 who is going to serve as the BBEG of my campaign. He has a LOT of resources and ample time on his hands.

[Zaq]

Just how many resources are you willing to spend? One feat? Several feats? Class levels? Gold?

Regardless of the answer, the Diamond Mind save replacement maneuvers are always useful. More information about how much we have to work with will help, though.

[Runestar]

1) Spend a feat on mind over body, a ToB maneuver which lets you make a concentration check in place of a fort save, 1/encounter. MIC also has headband of conscious effort (which does the same thing), allowing you to potentially resist up to 2 disintegrates.

2) There are spells which counter rays, such as ray deflection (SC) or miss chances (eg: displacement).

[John Doe]

8th level spell Protection from Spells grants a +8 resistance bonus to all saving throws. That's how I protect my lichs.

[Runestar]

8th level spell Protection from Spells grants a +8 resistance bonus to all saving throws. That's how I protect my lichs.

That doesn't seem like much. At lv17+, a caster is capable of throwing out maximized disintegrates with DCs in the high 20s. A lich with base fort save+6 and +8 resistance bonus has a fort save of only +14; he will still fail 50+% of the time.

Alternatively, have cohorts standby to counterspell or ready actions to smack the party wizard with damage spells when he tries to do something.

[Thurbane]

Miss chance, high touch AC and high SR are ways to defend against Disintegrate, and all are relatively easy to get at high levels.

Also, feats and items that allow re-rolls.

Finally, X Stat to Y Bonus has quite a few ways to add various abilities to various saves.

[John Doe]

That doesn't seem like much. At lv17+, a caster is capable of throwing out maximized disintegrates with DCs in the high 20s. A lich with base fort save+6 and +8 resistance bonus has a fort save of only +14; he will still fail 50+% of the time.

Alternatively, have cohorts standby to counterspell or ready actions to smack the party wizard with damage spells when he tries to do something.

Well..., I uh... do tend to DM in a way that ermmm... lets say... "restricts casters". Save DC in the high 20s doesn't often happen.

[tyckspoon]

Buff his touch AC and his saves. Fortunately psionics is pretty good at those, and since you're willing to have him spend XP the psionic research rules mean you don't really need to be bound to his actual Powers Known chart. Prebuff with a Moment of Prescience, which allows +Manifester Level as an Insight bonus to a single save or AC against one attack roll (suggest using it against an attack roll, as even if they roll a 20 you can still try to make the save.) That plus an item of the Diamond Mind maneuver should let you at least survive to take an action, at which point you Link Power Defensive Precognition and Greater Concealing Amorpha. You now have +6 Insight to your AC and saves, which stacks with basically everything, along with Total Concealment that is not negated by True Seeing or.. well, much of anything. Blindsight might do it. If you really want to be annoying, add in Power Resistance for 12+ML resistance.

And of course you could just soak it with the old Vigor/Share Pain combo- get a psicrystal or a suitably beefy Thrall or two (preferably one that can efficiently heal itself/you) and manifest Share Pain on it. When the fight starts, manifest Vigor (most efficient if you can Link Power it to another buff or Quicken it.) Even if you do suck down a Disintegrate, half the damage will hit your Thrall and the other half will be absorbed by your temp HP pool, which you can then renew with another Quickened Vigor. It's a little more efficient with the Psicrystal because you can share the Vigor with it.

Edit: So.. get a spellcasting thrall. Have yourself buffed with Superior Resistance every day (Protection From Spells is better, but shorter duration and requires rather a costly diamond supply if you make it a continual buff. And if you have 8th level spells available to get buffed like this, you can also get a Greater Spell Immunity against Disintegrate and stop worrying about it.) That's 6 base Fort and 6 Resistance so far. Carry a Luckstone and a Pale Green Ioun Stone- +1 Luck, +1 Competence, both relatively rare bonus types that stack with pretty much everything and are pretty cheap for the level. +14 save. Run a Moment of Prescience- that's at least +21 AC or Save bonus you can call on even when flatfooted, which is important if the heroes manage to score a surprise round (they shouldn't, you have herdlings to serve as an alarm system, but it might happen.) When you act, Defensive Precognition for +6 or +7 depending on the ML you can reach. That'll give you a +20/21 save for the fight, which should be a much more comfortable number. And your touch AC should be at least.. let's see. 10 base +5 Deflection + 2 Vampire template dex bonus + 3 Dex item modifier + 6 Defensive Precognition + 1 Luckstone.. 27 is a reasonably hard target, and you'll have 50% miss chance from Greater Concealing Amorpha. The Wizard should give up trying touch attacks pretty shortly.. either that or start burning spell slots and swift actions on True Striking.

[Thurbane]

Using the custom item creation guidelines, a permanent, slotted item of Ray Deflection would cost = 4*7*2000*2 = 112,000gp.

[Lateral]

Hmm... I need Int, Dex, or Cha to Fort in order to make it worthwhile. Lessee... the only effective way seems to be Cha to all saves with Blackguard 2. That'd be perfect... except that I can't take Blackguard. Actually, I could go for Paladin of Tyranny 2, but that loses me 2 manifester levels, after already losing one to Thrallherd (houseruled from 2 lost to 1 lost). Not gonna happen. Hmm... I wonder if...
Hey, is there another way to get Dark Blessing or Divine Grace using resources?

[Foryn Gilnith]

As a standard action, you gain a profane bonus on saving throws equal to your Charisma bonus (minimum +1).
This bonus lasts for 5 rounds

It's a feat.

[Eldariel]

Protective spells can help. Divine Magic offers Greater Spell Immunity, for example, which is 100% fool proof. Research a Psionic version? Spellblade [Player's Guide to Faerun] works too. Of course, all of those are just individual spells. Of course, that doesn't help against other options like e.g. PAO (though Liches are of course inherently immune to that one).

Yeh, Martial Study/Novice Diamond Mind item for Mind Over Body maneuver is very good for one spell per fight. Headband of Conscious Effort is also one, and very cheap. Otherwise, this thread should help.

[Mastikator]

Etherealness, I believe being ethereal means you're not subject for disintigration (without transdimensional spell or something). I may be wrong though.
An epic level psion should be able to pull it off.

[Eloel]

Hmm... I need Int, Dex, or Cha to Fort in order to make it worthwhile. Lessee... the only effective way seems to be Cha to all saves with Blackguard 2. That'd be perfect... except that I can't take Blackguard. Actually, I could go for Paladin of Tyranny 2, but that loses me 2 manifester levels, after already losing one to Thrallherd (houseruled from 2 lost to 1 lost). Not gonna happen. Hmm... I wonder if...
Hey, is there another way to get Dark Blessing or Divine Grace using resources?

1 level of Warlock gives +Cha to a save of your choice.
The aforementioned Concentration check maneuver is also very useful, since you have Cha to Concentration checks as an undead.
Ruin Delver's Fortune (spell) is what takes the cake for me, with Cha to a save for 1d4 rounds, cast as an immediate action. If you're a spontaneous caster, it WILL save your life. Multiple times.

Edit: /facepalm. You're not a caster, you're a psion. Uhhh, searching...

This combined with this can keep up a +ML-6 bonus for quite some time. Make the schism ready an action to manifest Moment of Prescience whenever you're targeted with Disintegrate, and it acts like Contingency vs Disintegrate

[Alleine]

You are a thrallherd. Use this.
You no doubt have oodles of minions at your disposal, and they refresh every 24 hours. Just have a dozen or so within reach, all readying actions to dive in front of you to take any nasty spells. After all, what's the point of minions if you can't let them die in droves?

[Eldariel]

Marshal 1 for Inspire Fortitude would work; Cha to Fort-saves.

[FelixG]

You are a thrallherd. Use this.
You no doubt have oodles of minions at your disposal, and they refresh every 24 hours. Just have a dozen or so within reach, all readying actions to dive in front of you to take any nasty spells. After all, what's the point of minions if you can't let them die in droves?

I like this one

Seems like a suitably villain-esque thing to do!

[faceroll]

If you really want to go DM fiat but still stay within the rules, use the variant psionic class erudite, with spell to power in place of his first level feat. Now you can pretty much give him whatever you want.

[Greenish]

Marshal 1 for Inspire Fortitude would work; Cha to Fort-saves.

Goes well for one of the Believers, too, since it's an aura.

[Ragitsu]

This is absolutely unhelpful, but, when I saw this thread title just now, I somehow read it as "Undead Fart" for a split second.

[Lateral]

You are a thrallherd. Use this.
You no doubt have oodles of minions at your disposal, and they refresh every 24 hours. Just have a dozen or so within reach, all readying actions to dive in front of you to take any nasty spells. After all, what's the point of minions if you can't let them die in droves?

That'd work, but he's not that kind of BBEG. It'd be completely out of character.

Goes well for one of the Believers, too, since it's an aura.

Yeah... you're right. I have more than a hundred thralls, I could just make one a marshal. Does their marshal level make a difference in how powerful the aura is?

[Urpriest]

Yeah... you're right. I have more than a hundred thralls, I could just make one a marshal. Does their marshal level make a difference in how powerful the aura is?

Nope. While the Major auras are important enough to scale with level, and give such important things as +1 to hit, the Minor auras are essentially freebies, as they give such minor, fluff-heavy benefits as Cha to almost anything. Go figure.

[PlzBreakMyCmpAn]

1 level of Warlock gives +Cha to a save of your choice.

false. It gives +1 maximum for a warlock 1, assuming the warlock has a charisma of atleast 12. Serious fail